A black South Carolina man was in serious condition Friday after being shot by a white deputy sheriff responding to his report of someone breaking into his house.

Authorities moved quickly to try to calm tensions over the episode, which occurred in the same county as the April 4 police shooting of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, and amid a furious national debate over police use of force in minority communities.

“We’re as sorry as we can be,” Charleston County Sheriff James Alton Cannon Jr. said in a Friday meeting with community leaders.

“What makes this even more of a tragedy for us is that someone in effect called us for help and we ended up being a part of him getting injured seriously,” Cannon said.

The victim, Bryan Heyward, called 911 around 11 a.m. Thursday to report that armed men were trying to enter his mother’s home in the rural town of Hollywood, authorities said. “It’s an emergency and they have guns,” Heyward said, according to recordings released by authorities.